Lord'S

Louis, the 23-year-old, comes into the team on the back of a brilliant season for the Leeward Islands in the 2024 West Indies Championship where he scored 682 runs in 14 innings at an average of 49.

He is coming off a first innings half-century in their warm-up game against the County Select XI last week.

Retaining their places in the order are Kirk McKenzie at three, Alick Athanaze at four and Kavem Hodge at five.

McKenzie and Athanaze scored three half-centuries between them in the warm-up fixture last week while Hodge scored a brilliant hundred so all three are coming into the first Test in some good form.

Also making their return to the West Indies test team after missing the Australia series in December are former Captain Jason Holder and young pacer Jayden Seales.

Both Holder and Seales recently enjoyed successful County Championship stints for Worcestershire and Sussex, respectively.

Gudakesh Motie will be the lone spinner in the XI while Holder and Seales will be joined in the pace attack by Alzarri and Shamar Joseph.

Josh a Da Silva also retains his place behind the stumps.

The full XI is as follows: Kraigg Brathwaite (C), Mikyle Louis, Kirk McKenzie, Alick Athanaze, Kavem Hodge, Jason Holder, Joshua Da Silva, Gudakesh Motie, Jayden Seales, Alzarri Joseph, Shamar Joseph

The Baggy Greens lead England 2-1 in the ongoing ODI series heading into the fourth instalment on Friday.

It will be Australia's first visit to Lord's since unsavoury scenes involving their players and spectators ensued during the notorious Ashes Test, following Alex Carey's controversial stumping of Jonny Bairstow. 

The incident culminated in an MCC member receiving a lifetime ban, while two others were suspended for directing "abusive, offensive or inappropriate behaviour or language" towards Australia's players.

Carey has enjoyed an impressive series, hitting 74 in the second ODI at Headingley and 77 in the third in Durham, and Marsh insists his team-mates are motivated by last year's events.

When asked if there had been any discussions ahead of their return, he told reporters: "No, there hasn't. We've really moved on from that.

"I think there's always excitement playing at Lord's. It's the greatest ground in the world, bar the WACA, of course - the history and the tradition here, it's always a fantastic place to play.

"Obviously, these things happen in Ashes Test matches. There's not a series that goes by that doesn't have some sort of drama."

On Carey, he added: "I don't think [being motivated by last year's events is] in his character. But Alex certainly loves playing in England. We all do.

"The fans are always incredible, and it's always a tough challenge playing against England, so I think he's just wrapped to be back here playing for Australia."

The Spirit first posted 150-5 from their 100 balls after Fire captain Tammy Beaumont won the toss and put them in to bat.

Danielle Gibson led the way with the bat with a 25-ball 41 while Deepti Sharma made 39* off 26 balls in support.

Freya Davies took 2-19 from her 20 deliveries for the Fire while Beth Langston, Jess Jonassen and Georgia Davis shared the other three wickets.

Needing 151 off their 100 balls for victory, the Fire lost skipper Beaumont for 6 off the 11^th ball of the innings bringing Matthews to the crease.

The Bajan batted through the rest of the chase on her way to 78* off just 46 balls as the Fire reached 151-4 off 95 balls.

She hit 11 fours and two sixes in her 59 minutes in the middle. Sarah Bryce provided the most support for Matthews with 21 off 18 balls including three fours.

Danielle Gibson completed a good all-round performance with 2-28 off 15 balls.

This was the Fire’s second win in three games and moves them up to third in the eight-team table with four points, the same as the Spirit in second and the Oval Invincibles in first.

In fact, Lara who has never been shy about expressing his views, pointed out that the onus is on Cricket West Indies (CWI) to take the necessary steps to resolve the slippage, as the Caribbean side –ranked eighth in the ICC Test rankings –suffered a crushing innings and 114-run defeat to England inside three days in the first of their three-match series, at Lord’s.  

“If you put 100 million, 200 million dollars into the West Indies’ bank account, is it going to change the way we play the game? I’m not sure. We are not harnessing the talent that we have,” Lara told BBC World Service’s Stumped podcast.

Though the likes of Nicholas Pooran and Shai Hope possess enough ability to play crucial roles in Test, both have opted to play just white-ball cricket internationally, which enables them to play in franchise leagues across the world.

That along with the fact that other sports, such as athletics, are vying for the sponsorship dollars across the Caribbean, Lara believes has pushed cricket on the outside.

“Obviously, cricket has been diluted by the number of different sports and different opportunities for kids, but I still believe that corporate West Indies have got to get involved,” Lara said.

“The West Indies Cricket Board hasn’t done the right job in attracting these sponsors to ensure that at least grassroots, but also the academy, all the different things, the facilities, are up to standard. I think these things are very, very important,” he added.

On that note, Lara also stressed the need for more to be done to revive public interest in the longer format.

“We don’t have anybody coming through the gate. I walked in Lord’s about 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday and outside there were people waiting. That was something I was accustomed to as a kid, getting to the Queens Park Oval at 5:30 and waiting for the gate to be open.

“That’s not happening. You get there at 11 o’clock and there is an empty stadium. You could pick a seat wherever you want. We have to try to get the crowd back,” Lara shared.

“That will breathe the life back into the people of the Caribbean and let them understand what Test cricket is all about and you can get the world of money. You still need to sort of get the crowd more passionate about it and we haven’t been able to do that,” he noted.

The second Ashes Test sees the visiting spinner bring up an unprecedented landmark for a bowler and here, the PA news agency looks at his record in that time.

Lyon will become only the sixth man to play 100 consecutive Tests, with the others all specialist batters including one regular wicketkeeper – current England coach Brendon McCullum, whose 101 Tests without missing a game mark the next figure for Lyon to pass. McCullum took the gloves in 52 of those games.

India’s Sunil Gavaskar and Australia’s Mark Waugh played 106 and 107 consecutive Tests respectively, both in Lyon’s sights barring injury or a shock omission.

Allan Border’s Australian record of 153 successive appearances will surely remain out of reach, however, along with former England captain Sir Alastair Cook’s world record of 159.

Even the other regular bowlers on the list were all-rounders, with Sir Garry Sobers closest behind Lyon with 85 consecutive appearances for the West Indies.

Kapil Dev had separate runs of 66 and 65 for India, missing only one Test in his 131-match career, while Lord Ian Botham also played 65 in a row for England between 1978 and 1984.

In terms of specialist bowlers, spinner Anil Kumble’s 60 consecutive Tests for India from 1992 to 2000 is the longest run other than Lyon’s.

Lyon’s 495 Test wickets rank eighth all time and fourth among spinners, with the fairytale prospect of bringing up 500 and adding his name to the famous Lord’s honours board in the process.

On his previous visits to the Home of Cricket, he took one for 53 and two for 27 in 2015 and three for 68 before a wicketless second innings in 2019.

He needs 24 wickets to catch former West Indies paceman Courtney Walsh for the next spot on the list, though compatriot Glenn McGrath could remain out of reach in sixth, 68 ahead of Lyon.

England’s long-standing new-ball pair James Anderson (686) and Stuart Broad (588) are in the top five along with the other spinners on the list – Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan clear on 800, Australia great Shane Warne taking 708 and India’s Anil Kumble splitting Anderson and Broad with 619.

Since his debut in August 2011, Lyon has missed only four of the 125 Tests Australia have played – against India at Perth in 2012 and Hyderabad the following year, plus the first two games of the 2013 Ashes in England.

Since being recalled at Old Trafford in August 2013 he has been ever-present, taking 419 wickets at an average of 30.60 including 20 of his 23 five-wicket hauls.

He has four 10-wicket matches along the way, with his best figures of eight for 50 in an innings and 13 for 154 in a match both set in 2017 against India and Bangladesh respectively.

His run of 99 Tests so far includes 109 wickets in 29 Ashes Tests and 99 in 21 against India, with double figures of Tests too against South Africa (13) and Pakistan (12). Eight games against New Zealand, seven each against the West Indies and Sri Lanka and two against Bangladesh complete the list.

The former England captain set up the Ruth Strauss Foundation in memory of his late wife, who died in 2018 from a non-smoking lung cancer, and has worked alongside the cricket community to raise funds and awareness for the past four years.

Day two of England’s second Test against Australia will once again see Lord’s awash in red, with players from both sides joining fans and pundits in marking the occasion in colourful fashion.

The foundation has already been able to achieve some oits aims in providing pre-bereavement counselling for children and partners, training for healthcare professionals and peer-to-peer support networks, but Strauss believes the surface has only just been scratched and sees the elevated platform of this summer’s series as a catalyst.

“We’ve still got a long way to go. The more we do, the more we need to do and the broader our reach needs to be,” he said.

“Hopefully an Ashes Test match is a time where people who aren’t always watching cricket are suddenly tuning in. We understand the opportunity we have in front of us in the next few days.

“We’re excited about having the platform to show that and we’re incredibly lucky to have so much support from the cricket community. But we know people are going through this from all walks of life, some of whom having never heard of cricket or the Ruth Strauss Foundation.

“We’re here to help as many people as possible. We’ve helped hundreds of families and directly trained up hundreds of nurses, but we feel the reach is expanding all the time.

“I can honestly say we’ve got anywhere near where we want to. This still very near to the start of the journey for us. The support we get allows us to turn those hundreds into thousands and those thousands into tens of thousands. This is about scaling up what we can offer.

“There’s 127 children every day losing a parent and we want to be there for the majority of them.”

Strauss is aware that the doors of Lord’s may not be thrown open to him had he not been a decorated former England skipper, but is increasingly determined to use that privileged position for good.

“Without the success I had on the cricket field I wouldn’t have had this platform,” he said.

“I was very proud of what I achieved in an England shirt. That was about me and achieving my goals, but this is about something much greater than me.

“It breaks my heart that every day there are hundreds of kids being put into the situation that my kids were put into. We can’t change that but we can make it a little bit easier.”

http://ruthstraussfoundation.com

The Australia batsman became the first cricketer to be formally substituted out of a Test match with concussion when he withdrew from the second Test at Lord’s in 2019.

Smith initially passed concussion testing before returning having been struck on the neck by England pace bowler Jofra Archer on day four.

Yet he was ruled out on the final day – with the match drawn – and also missed the following Test at Headingley.

Smith recalled the incident ahead of the second Test, which starts on Wednesday. Australia lead the series following their two-wicket victory in the opener at Edgbaston.

The 34-year-old explained: “It was just a day that I wasn’t quite seeing the ball as well as I would have liked from that end.

“Archer was bowling 93 to 96 miles an hour at stages. And the wicket felt like it was a little bit up and down. So it certainly wasn’t easy.

“It was a very difficult period to get through, and obviously I caught one on the arm, got away with a few pull shots that are top edge and a couple in the gaps. And then I caught one in the back of the head, which hurt a fair bit.

“At that stage, I didn’t realise I was getting concussed. I went off and did all the tests, passed all the tests.

“It wasn’t until I came back out and half an hour after, when the adrenaline sort of went out of my system and I started to feel quite groggy, probably like I’d had a dozen beers to be honest. That lasted for a little bit. It was a difficult period and he bowled really nicely.”

Smith scored 92 in the first innings, which had been delayed due to rain, before he was dismissed lbw by Chris Woakes.

“I remember spending a lot of time in the nets and even the day before the game, I think I had a really long net, I just couldn’t find a rhythm. And then finally, something just clicked and I started to feel good,” he said.

“That was probably after two and a half hours in the net. So I’d say after that I was probably a little bit mentally fatigued from having such a long hit the day before the game, but I also felt like I was prepared and ready to go. And then it was just about going out in the middle and playing.

“We were losing a lot of wickets at the other end throughout that innings. I was just trying to stay in the present as much as possible, probably up until we’re about eight down, which was when I started to probably play a few more shots.”

::Legends of The Ashes is a new 10-part Global Original podcast series on Global Player and all major audio platforms.